The Tema Municipal Assembly (TMA) and the Tema Development Corporation TDC) have warned residents, who have placed sea containers at unauthorised places in the municipality to remove them immediately.

Mr Charles Djabatey, Tema Municipal Engineer, gave the warning during a joint exercise began on Tuesday at the periphery of Tema to remove such containers due to the nuisance they posed.

He said people were placing containers at unauthorised places in the Municipality and this had become an issue of major concern to the two city authorities.

Mr Djabatey explained that the only circumstances under which containers were allowed was when the TDC had given the owner a plot of land and the TMA had also given a permit, renewable on a yearly basis.

Containers were also allowed when they were placed in the person's own compound or another person's compound after negotiations.

Under the exercise, the TMA and TDC have hired a crane for 700,000 cedis an hour and flat body truck for one million cedis a day to remove the unauthorised containers and the owners would be surcharged or the containers would be auctioned to recover the cost if the owners did not come for them. Currently, the taskforce is able to remove four to five containers a day and this would be done on weekly basis to rid Tema of all containers.

Investigations by the GNA revealed that some shipping lines that wanted to replenish their sea container stock sold the old ones to the public after erasing their logo on them.